Always submit your questions in advance and get confirmation that the subject is willing and able to address them.

Open questions are your best opportunity to engage a subject – here are five standard journalist questions you can nearly always ask to elicit answers that are useful to your listeners:

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned about X…?

What’s your key piece of advice on X…?

How would you explain topic X to a newcomer?

What keeps you interested in X…?

What drives you mad about X…?

And the catch-all bonus question:

Is there anything we haven’t covered that you want to get across about X…?

2. Check Your Levels:

We’re not going to get into the details about sound levels, but know this: There’s plenty of research (notably Clark and Mayer) that show that learners care a lot about sound quality. A great interview recorded poorly is not going to hit the mark. Here are a couple of points to bear in mind to ensure a quality outcome:

Get there early to check out the recording environment.

Check sound levels.

Monitor noise variations.

Air conditions, traffic, phone rings, footsteps.

Some ambient noise can be useful, too much is dreadful.

Keep headphones on at all times when recording – you’ll hear background noise that you would ignore if just listening normally

3. Get Recording:

Your subject is in the chair and you’re about to hit record. A few key points to bear in mind:

Check questions with subject and ensure they’re ready and able to answer and that someone from compliance / marketing / the FSA hasn’t suddenly edited all your questions for you.

Check your timing: do you have 10 minutes all of a sudden? Know what questions tol cut if you’re short on time.

Record a sample, stop, play back, check levels, make adjustments.

As you work through your question set:

Start with an easy opening question.

Switch off your agreement voice (saying ‘yes, I see, ok, right…’, which are perfectly normal in conversation but are distracting when listening to an interview subject).

Know when to stop and redirect (if you’re not getting what you want: if the subject is going off track: if they’re answering a different question).

Don’t be afraid to ask for another take – save yourself pain in the editing process by trying to get complete answers to questions on the day, rather than assuming it will be possible to stitch together four sentences from three different answers, as that’s very time consuming and rarely sounds natural.

4. Cut It Up:

You’ve got your gold, now it’s time to separate it from all the rubble. Editing is made easy with free tools like Audacity. The basic functions you’ll need to get to grips with are:

We don’t have the space here to get into the how-to’s of using an editing tool like Audacity, but it’s a free download with plenty of well-written tutorials and supporting information.

When you’re editing:

Do it as soon as possible after the recording, otherwise you will forget where you asked for second takes.

Listen to the whole recording through first and make notes on the timing ins/outs that you’ll want to use. Resist the temptation to start editing the answer to question 1, only to find that you asked the subject to do it again later (it’s amazing how much you forget when it comes to the edit, hence the point above about doing it as soon as you can).

Copy and paste your rough ins/outs from the master into new files – don’t ever edit your master version as you never know when a subject might ask for the full version or you might want to go back for a different take.

Get the ins and outs all sorted first, then come back and adjust levels, equalization, etc, once you’ve got a final take.

If you’re using music, acquaint yourself with copyright laws of the land… there’s lots of rights-free music out there, just google it.